Franz Lehár’s first big success was Die lustige Witwe in
1905 with Der Graf von Luxembourg following in 1909.
But he found this sort of success difficult to repeat after
the Great War and it was only with Richard Tauber’s championing
of his work that Lehár began his final sequence of operettas,
starting with Paganini in 1925 and Der Zarewitch in
1927.

Style is a tricky issue in operetta and opera companies nowadays
frequently seem to have lost the ability to bring out the fragile
charm of Lehár’s works - apart from the odd, over-boiled
production of Die lustige Witwe. On this disc Naxos
have assembled a selection of excerpts from Lehár’s operettas
recorded in French by Adolphe Sibert. Sibert was Austro-Hungarian
by birth but Paris was his adopted city. He studied under
Wilhelm Furtwängler and Clemens Kraus and worked with Kálmán,
Stolz and Richard Strauss. In the post-war period he produced
broadcasts of Viennese and light orchestral music for French
radio.

The advantage of having Sibert at the helm in these recordings is
that they have just the right combination of style and
charm; they hit the period flavour perfectly. The drawback
is that the ORTF orchestra are not the most disciplined
of bands so that with the style goes a degree of untidiness
and a tendency for the strings to play like Mantovani.
This might put some people off, but I loved it.

The soloists are stars of French operetta and the Opéra Comique. They
sing Lehár as if he was a Frenchman. Soprano Lina Dachary,
who was originally Basque, has a silvery, narrow focused
French voice in the Mady Mesplé mould. A tendency to sharpness
and hardness can occur in the upper register but she sings
the music with such love and charm that you rather forgive
her. Dachary sings the soprano solos is Le Tsarévitch,
Frédérique, Le Comte de Luxembourg and Le Danse
de Libellules.

In Giuditta the soprano solo, meine Lippe sie kussen so
heiss is sung by Anita Ammersfeld in the original
German. Ammersfeld is joined on the disc by Alain Vanzo,
though the two recorded at different times. Vanzo contributes
two lovely solos including some stunning final head notes.
André Dran is Lina Dachary’s stylish partner in Le
Comte de Luxembourg and Henri Legayjoins
her in two duos from La danse de libellules.

The different times of recording of the various tracks means that
the presentation varies slightly. Whilst most were obviously
recorded live, with applause which is at times rather annoying,
other tracks have no applause.

How you react to this disc will depend on how you appreciate
hearing Lehár with a period French accent. Personally I
found them to be style and charm personified, despite the
untidiness.

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